"The Birthday Party"

Stanley Webber, an out-of-work pianist apparently on the run, is the only guest in a shabby, seaside rooming house run by Meg and her husband Petey. Stanley, who’s been holed up there for the last year, seems to be having an affair with his landlady, while her husband acts oblivious or, more likely, indifferent. This placid banality is invaded by the appearance of two mysterious strangers, Goldberg and McCann who arrive looking for Stanley, supposedly on his birthday. Who are they and what has Stanley done? Convention is swiftly upended by chaos. They take control of the party and turn it into a grotesque comedy of paranoia and persecution. "The Birthday Party" was Pinter’s first full-length play and immediately established his trademark style—a “comedy of menace” in which what is not said is more dangerous than what is, opening the door to another world where familiar surfaces hide all the dark, and often poisonous, secrets we keep from ourselves.